Senior Director, Sales Development (SDRs)

At Instructure, we believe in the power of people to grow and succeed throughout their lives. Our goal is to amplify that power by creating intuitive products that simplify learning and personal development, facilitate meaningful relationships, and inspire people to go further in their education and careers. We do this by giving smart, creative, passionate people opportunities to create awesome. 
And that's where you come in:

As our Senior Director of Global Sales Development (SDR), you will be the executive leader responsible for the strategy, execution, and predictable performance of our entire global Sales Development organization, consisting of 40+ team members.
You will lead a high-performing, multi-product team that operates across regions, time zones, and diverse market segments. Your primary mandate is to design, implement, and optimize a world-class pipeline generation engine that consistently delivers high-quality, sales-qualified opportunities to our Account Executives. This role requires balancing a high-activity, metrics-driven approach with sophisticated strategies that leverage personalization and value-based engagement at every stage of the customer journey.
We are looking for a decisive and proven leader who excels at scaling operations, driving organizational standardization, and fostering a relentless culture of coaching, development, and high accountability.

What you’ll do:

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Global Strategy & Pipeline Leadership
• Set and Execute Global Strategy: Define and execute the comprehensive global Sales Development strategy, ensuring alignment across multiple product lines, complex sales cycles, and target customer segments.
• Predictable Pipeline Generation: Deliver against quarterly and annual pipeline generation targets, focusing on improving the predictability and conversion rates of qualified opportunities (SQOs) into closed-won business.
• Optimize Sales Playbook: Own the SDR outreach methodology, continuously developing and refining high-impact outbound sales plays, personalization tactics, and sequencing strategies to penetrate target accounts effectively.

Organizational Scale & Operational Excellence
• Manage Managers & Scale: Provide executive leadership and mentorship to the management team within the 40-person SDR organization, ensuring leadership consistency and execution alignment across all geographies.
• Implement Standardization: Establish and enforce scalable processes, uniform KPIs, and disciplined forecasting methodologies to drive efficiency across the global team.
• Data-Driven Performance: Champion data fluency, leveraging advanced analytics to inform outreach strategy, optimize resource allocation, and drive continuous improvement in qualification and conversion metrics.

Technology & Enablement
• Tech Stack Optimization: Own the adoption, utilization, and optimization of the core sales technology stack, including sales engagement platforms (Outreach), account-based orchestration tools (6sense, Demandbase), and CRM systems, ensuring maximum SDR productivity and accurate data integrity.
• Coaching & Career Pathing: Build a high-performance culture that prioritizes daily coaching and enablement. Ensure clear, motivating pathways for career growth from SDR to management and into Account Executive roles.

Cross-Functional Alignment
• Go-to-Market Partnership: Partner closely with Marketing, Sales, and RevOps to ensure seamless handoff processes, consistent messaging, and aligned go-to-market strategies that accelerate revenue across the entire organization.

What you will need to know/have:

• Scale Experience (Mandatory):10+ years of sales leadership experience, including significant, verifiable experience leading B2B Sales Development/Lead Generation organizations of 40+ team members or more.
• Management Layer Expertise: Proven success managing a team of managers and scaling multi-product, multi-cycle, inbound and outbound SDR teams in B2B environments.
• Deep Domain Knowledge: Deep expertise in developing and executing high-velocity and strategic outbound and inbound Sales Development motions to identify and qualify target customer profiles.
• Technology Fluency: Hands-on experience implementing, administering, and optimizing sales engagement platforms (Outreach, Salesloft), ABM tools (Demandbase, 6sense), and CRM systems (Salesforce).
• Global Leadership: Extensive experience managing geographically distributed teams across multiple regions and time zones, with a strong emphasis on global alignment and local market nuance.
• Soft Skills: Exceptional communication, executive presence, influence, and change management skills.
• SaaS or Enterprise technology industry experienc